As if UAE and Egypt and Saudi have not embraced “political Islam”. Are you joking????

Turkey is a constitutionally secular country and a modern society. UAE and Egypt and Saudi are Shariah-ruled semi to full theocracies.

The relations are bad because the UAE and Saudi are trying to setup an empire with oil money, soft power, and Egyptian soldiers. They are also shamelessly hypocritical about radical Islam... meanwhile you will be lashed if you drink a beer in Saudi or UAE... a bunch of Oil Sheikhs have gotten used to getting anything and everything with money, living beyond the law while carousing in Europe/US and generally being impudent spoiled children. They couldn’t buy Erdogan so they bought Op-Eds in the foreign press instead.

Somehow the US foreign policy establishment and Israel are attempting to sell the idea that UAE/Saudi/Egypt are not the evil shariah axis that they are... now that is a geopolitically interesting game.

You have to count the effect of morale. The annihilation of ISIS is a huge blow to the people sympathetic to their ideology. Even if we have to worry about their remaining fighters, it'll have the effect of greatly reducing the creation of new ones.

It's extremely hard for them to reach North Africa from where they are. There are a few that have gone that way but it's a trickle. The branches of ISIS in the Sinai and in Libya are pre-existing local groups that changed their names, not offshoots of the principal branch in Syria and Iraq.

Huh you realize this is a joke from Indiana Jones that the locals like to reference with tourists, right? The actual shocking part here is that you remained so sheltered and clueless that you thought they were being serious

I disagree. There's one true universal language, common to all humans and animals: that of force. Especially so in the Middle East, where appeals to reason are often futile due to indoctrination and fanaticism.

What needs to be done is to treat what remains of ISIS, fleeing or not, with utmost brutality and ruthlessness. This so that anyone who ever presumes to anything like ISIS will think twice in the future.

Sorry, but this is silly. The premise is that each plague targeted a specific deity of the Egyptian pantheon and were not "random manifestations of the Jewish God's power". But the ancient Egyptians had a deity, sometimes several, for literally everything in their environment. The plagues could have been anything and you could have just as well tied each to some Egyptian god.

The point was to convey the general power of the Jewish God over that of all the Egyptian gods, not any particular ones. If your argument were correct, I think the connections would have been a lot more straightforward and they would have targeted only the most important Egyptian gods, not mostly minor ones as in your argument.

Whoever wrote that story probably had very little knowledge of the Egyptian religion anyway, certainly not to the extent of knowing the minor deities you mention.

If you don't give people a political avenue to express their desires they will probably resort to violence. History is full of these types of situations. When Egypt dismantled the muslim brotherhood as a political entity they were not able to kill every single person who voted for them or supported their policies. Those people went underground but of course they still held the same beliefs and goals. The only avenue left to them was to assemble underground and continue their efforts in secret. I predict there will be much more violence in Egypt as time goes on. That's pretty much inevitable in every dictatorships. Some dictators are better than others at crushing dissent, we'll see how good Sisi ends up doing against this thorn in his side.

I think the intangible "character of a people" is an important thing to take into consideration in such predictions. Egyptians are not Syrians nor Iraqis, they have always been known for their general passivity and lack of initiative. Haji A. Browne writes in 1907:

[...] for of all the peoples of the East, the Egyptians were, and are, the least susceptible of imbibing the spirit that marked the early spread of Islam, gave it the energy that carried it to victory, and still gives it such vitality as it continues to possess. [...] the Egyptian continued to be as he had been before -- a man with no higher ambition than that of passing through life with the least possible trouble.

An outdated source, but with relevant observations nonetheless. I really doubt your prediction will come to pass.

It seems Qatar has become the latest scapegoat for KSA and other Gulf States as they posture for favorable relations with the Trump administration and ploy for regional power. Is Qatar guilty of negligence and possibly outright funding of terrorist organizations, I'd say so. Yet Saudi Arabia fosters extremism as well... this is a prime example of deflection. It is also unusual for Turkey and Iran to find common ground as they've supported opposing sides throughout the Syrian Civil War, whereas Turkey, Qatar and Saudi Arabia cooperated in organizing rebel (and Jihadist) "coalitions" at certain points within the same conflict (e.g. the now defunct Army of Conquest/Jaish al-Fatah).

Qatar isn't some "scapegoat," it's a relentless state funder of Islamist ideology and not-so-secret sponsor of terrorist organizations.

The difference between Saudi Arabia and Qatar is that the Saudi monarchy actually wants to combat terrorism despite other elements within the Kingdom that support it. Qatar has shown an all-in support.

The rift in the Gulf Cooperation Council and Arab nations was caused by Qatar being a maverick country that doesn't play by the rules the hegemon (Saudi Arabia) set. Saudi Arabia can't make them play by the rules by causing fuckery internally, since Qatar is a mostly unified constitutional monarchy that has very few internal divisions.

Qatar is sympathetic of sorts to Turkey and Iran. They have clout that other countries in the region (Oman, Bahrain, Kuwait) don't, so their sympathetic attitude actually got things done in Syria and Libya. This rankles the Saudis.

For instance, a Qatari royal hunting party got kidnapped in southern Iraq and Qatar coughed up close to a billion dollars as ransom. This pissed off the Arab nations, who apparently think Qatar should not have paid the al-Qaeda affiliate any money.

So the straws that broke the camel's back were: the "fake" stories planted about the Emir saying things about the Muslim Brotherhood, Hamas and Iran, and this hostage negotiation.

This needs to be reinforced: this breakdown of relations is not sudden. The UAE Ambassador in DC has been trying to trash talk Qatar for quite a long time now, including talking to Jared Kushner to try and get the US base in Qatar shut down.

There was already a diplomatic crisis in 2014 when the countries pulled their diplomats out. Resolution will occur only when one of them blinks, and it's likely that Qatar will blink first because (among other things) they've been shut off completely via air, land and sea. Their airspace is enclosed by Bahrain, UAE and Saudi Arabia, which means if the UAE and Bahrain decide to enforce a no-fly zone (though they're signatory to the Chicago Convention on International Civil Aviation) then Qatar is fucked.

It's very very interesting that the hackers who hacked Qatar News Agency left behind signs that indicated they were Russian, and it's interesting all this happened shortly after Trump said he supported setting up an Arab NATO during his visit to Saudi Arabia in the middle of May.

So he says "yes lets get all you Arab nations into one alliance", and then somehow greenlights the internal squabble that throws a spanner in his statement? How does that make sense? The alternative is the Saudis and Emiratis did this without running it by the Americans, as a method of testing how the Americans will react to one of their own allies with a military base being pushed around.

Whatever is said and done, Putin is a genius. My pet theory about this is Putin exploited weaknesses within the GCC to get things he wants done in Syria, as well as potentially drive the price of crude up (maybe). I don't know if he's that diabolical or not but if there's anyone with a great motive to see the middle eastern countries getting all angsty, it's Russia.

US and Israel are supporting and cheering for Saudis too. From what i read Qatar may be the only Arab country that does not fund salafi jihadists but funding their rivals(Muslim brotherhood) . In fact this and Qatar's good relationship with Iran seem to be the biggest reasons for recent developments.

fun fact: there is not an entry about saudi's and state sponsored terrorism in wikipedia. I love how everyone reading a simple wikipedia article have this kind of self-confidence about their opinions.

It is not like there is a paper trail about which country funds which terrorist organizations. However, we have something called BRAIN and it is clear that a country that supports Hamas (Israel's dear friend Saudi's does not like, salafi jihadists does not like), funds Muslim brotherhood (historical enemy of Saudi's and jihadists) and have close relationships with Iran (biggest enemy of salafi jihadists and all arabs except Qatar) CLEARLY IS NOT THE KEY FUNDER OF ISIS. Moreover, Turkey, one of the closest allies of Qatar, shares same goals and alliences in the regions (maybe except not really close with IRAN)

The thing is there is not even a controversy about these stuff, it is just common knowledge for someone that familiar with Middle East.

fun fact: there is not an entry about saudi's and state sponsored terrorism in wikipedia

Perhaps they are simply better at hiding it. Whatever the case may be, it doesn't exonerate Qatar. Besides, the UAE and Egypt are part of this move and they have strong track records of anti-terrorism.

(biggest enemy of salafi jihadists and all arabs except Qatar)

Lebanon, Syria and Iraq have closer ties with Iran than does Qatar.

CLEARLY IS NOT THE KEY FUNDER OF ISIS

That assumes that Qatar is incapable of funding opposing factions. There's nothing to justify such an assumption. If anything, the accusations that have been brought by members of intelligence agencies and newspaper paint a Qatari foreign policy intent on destabilizing the region. Supporting opposing factions is completely in line with this.

You can laugh, but they did in Egypt and Gaza. That doesn't mean they're democratic or moderate, but they had more of an electoral mandate than the Saudi royal family. Why would the monarchs fear them if not for that reason?

Egypt has been gradually improving its ties with Iran at the expense of those with Saudi Arabia and the other Arab Gulf states. Egypt is motivated by its fear of Sunni Islamism, which it sees as the primary threat and agent of destabilization in the region, and its desire to regain its former position of leadership in the region.

On the other hand, the US wants to see a unified Arab Sunni front against Iran. It is important for American policy makers to try to end Egypt's rapprochement with Iran and distancing from Saudi Arabia to this end. For this, the US needs to take an aggressively intolerant stance towards Sunni Islamism.

Unfortunately the slaughter of Christians in Egypt is nothing new. Everybody knows it happens. This is one of the reasons the majority of refugees accepted should be Christian, at least in the USA.

Whenever I think about this I think after this war against ISIS and other rebels, and before the next war, after the division of Syria which will happen there should be a Christian country there, which is what Lebanon was supposed to be anyway before the Palestinians went there and declared war on Christians.

Sinai isn't Egypt proper. It's populated by Bedouins who are hostile to ethnic Egyptians, Muslim or Christian. The Islamist insurgents operating there are especially hostile to Christians in particular.

Its an old excuse used to draw lines in the sand. There is no real difference between copts and the rest of Egypt except that copts tend to be paler skinned (relative term) than most Egyptians. Studies show that there is less than 3% difference in looking for "coptic" halotypes (I think snowdon 1980, if not he references it). Coptics are just Egyptians who chose to pay tax rather than convert when the Islamic empire conquered Egypt (edit, and admittedly mixed with more greeks than arabs over the millenia). We are all brothers and sisters in the country but people love to draw divisions because it's how they view the world.

I am Egyptian. More Copts are from Upper Egypt as compared to Muslims and they have less Turkish , Balkan and Levantine influence compared to Muslims which is why they tend to be darker. You don't get Copts as pale as Bassem Youssef for example, even Rami Malek is not as pale.

In a Third World country of close to 100 million in one of the most unstable era in the history of an unstable region, with Islamist groups dead set on destabilizing his country, these are actually excellent numbers.

It's usually thought that groups like Assyrians and Lebanese Christians are remnants of the pre-Arab populations (and we don't have much of a reason to believe they don't share affinity with the groups they claim) while the Arabs of the Levant are at least primarily descended from Arab invaders.